To Leeward. F. Marion Crawford
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at the mark of attention. It was an approval, and an approval of the most public kind. The few words they exchanged were therefore all that could be desired. The vicomtesse nodded, smiled, nodded again, and sailed away in the easy swinging cadence of the waltz. Marcantonio looked gratefully after her. The air was warm and soft, and the light fluff from the linen carpet hung like a summer haze over the people, and the hundreds of candles, and the masses of flowers.
Marcantonio was silent. Something in the air told him that the time had come for him to speak—something in Miss Carnethy's look told him plainly enough, he thought, that he was not to speak in vain. The last notes of the waltz chased each other away and died, and the people fell to walking about and talking. Marcantonio gave Leonora his arm, and the pair moved off with the stream, and on through the great rooms till they reached an apartment less crowded than the rest, and sat down near a doorway.
The young man did not lack courage, and he was honestly in love with Leonora. He felt little hesitation about speaking, and only wished to put the question as frankly and as courteously as might be. As for her, she was obliged to acknowledge that she was agitated, although she had said to herself a hundred times that she would be as calm as though she were talking about the weather. But now that the supreme moment had come, a strange beating rose in her breast, and her face was as white as her throat. She looked obstinately before her, seeing nothing, and striving to appear to the world as though nothing were happening. Marcantonio sat by her side, and glanced quickly at her two or three times, with a very slight feeling of uncertainty as to the result of his wooing—very slight, but enough to make waiting impossible, where the stake was so high.
"Mademoiselle," he said, in low and earnest tones, "I have the permission of monsieur your father, and of madame your mother, to address you upon a subject which very closely concerns my happiness. Mademoiselle, will you be my wife?"
He sat leaning a little towards her, his hands folded together, and his face illuminated for a moment with intense love and anxiety. But Miss Carnethy did not see the look, and only heard the formal proposition his words conveyed. She saw a man standing in the door near them; she knew him—a Mr. Batiscombe, an English man of letters—and she wondered a little whether he would have used the same phrases in asking a woman to marry him—whether all men would speak alike in such a case.
She had looked forward to this scene—more than once. Again the figure of the ideal lover of her dreams came to her, and seemed to pour out strong speech of love. Again she involuntarily drew a comparison in her mind between Marcantonio and some one, something she could not define. On a sudden all the honesty of her conscience sprang up and showed her what she really felt.
A thousand times she had said to herself that she would never marry a man she did not love; and for once that she had said it to herself, she had said it ten times over to her friends, feeling that she was inculcating a good and serviceable lesson. And now her conscience told her that she did not love Marcantonio—at least not truly, certainly not as much as she would have liked to love. Then she remembered what she had thought that afternoon. How was it possible that she could have thought of him for a moment as her husband, if she did not love him—especially with her high standard about such things? Oh, that high standard! With a quick transition of thought she made up her mind; but there was a strange little feeling of pain in her, such as the prince might have felt in the fairy tale when the ring pricked him. Nevertheless, her mind was made up.
"Yes," she said very suddenly, turning so that she could almost see his eyes, but not quite, for she instinctively dreaded to look him in the face; "yes, I will be your wife."
"Merci, mademoiselle," he said. The room was nearly empty at the moment, and Marcantonio took her passive hand and touched her fingers with his lips, being quite sure that no one was looking. But the man who stood at the door saw it.
"Such a good match, you know!" said some people, who had no prejudices.
"Such a special grace!" said the resident Anglo-American Catholics; "he is quite sure to convert her!"
"Such a special grace!" exclaimed the resident Anglo-American Protestants; "she is quite sure to lead him back!"
"Il faut toujours se méfier des saints," remarked Marcantonio's uncle, concerning his nephew.
"Never trust red-haired women," said the man who had stood at the door.
The engagement made a sensation in Rome, a consummation very easily attained, and very little to be desired. In places where the intercourse between young marriageable men and young marriageable women is so constrained as it is in modern Europe, a man's inclinations do not escape comment, and a very small seed of truth grows, beneath the magic incantations of society tea parties, to a very large bush of gossip. Nevertheless these good people are always astonished when their prophecies are fulfilled, and the bush bears fruit instead of vanishing into emptiness; which shows that there is some capacity left in them for distinguishing truth and untruth. Marcantonio's marriage had long been a subject in every way to the taste of the chatterers, and though Madame de Charleroi had accused her brother of hastiness, for lack of a better reproach, it was nearly a year since his admiration for Miss Carnethy had been first noticed. During that time every particular of her parentage and fortune had been carefully sought after, especially by those who had the least interest in the matter; and the universal verdict had been that the Marchese Carantoni might, could, should, and probably would, marry Miss Leonora Carnethy. And now that the engagement was out, society grunted as a pig may when among the crab-oaks of Périgord he has discovered a particularly fat and unctuous truffle.
Probably the happiest person was Marcantonio himself. He was an honest, whole-souled man, and in his eyes Leonora was altogether the most beautiful, the most accomplished, and the most charming woman in the world. That he expressed himself with so much self-control and propriety when he asked her to marry him was wholly due to the manner of his education and training in the social proprieties. That a man should use any language warmer or less guarded than that of absolutely respectful and distant courtesy toward the lady he intended to make his wife was not conceivable to him. In the privacy of his own rooms he worshipped and adored her with all his might and main, but when he addressed her in person it was as a subject addresses his sovereign; a tone of respectful and submissive reverence and obedience pervaded his actions and his words. He would have pleased a woman who loved sovereignty, better than a woman who dreamed of a sovereign love.
But she was never out of his thoughts, and if he wooed her humbly, he anticipated some submission on her part after marriage. He had no idea of always allowing her mind to wander in the strange channels it seemed to prefer. He thought such an intelligence capable of better things, and he determined, half unconsciously at first, and as a matter of course, that Miss Carnethy, the philosopher, should be known before long as the Marchesa Carantoni, the Catholic. Gradually the idea grew upon him, until he saw it as the grand object of his life, the great good deed he was to do. His love consented to it, and was purified and beautified to him in the thought that by it he should lead a great soul like hers to truth and light. He was perfectly in earnest, as he always was in matters of importance; for of all nations and peoples Italians have been most accused of frivolity, heartlessness, and inconstancy, and of all races they perhaps deserve the accusation least. They are the least imaginative people on earth, apart from the creative arts, and the most simple and earnest men in the matter of love. Northern races hate Italians, and they fasten triumphantly on that unlucky Latin sinner who falls first in their way as the prototype of his nation, and as the butt of their own prejudice. In the eyes of most northern people all Italians are liars; just as a typical Frenchman calls England "perfide Albion," and all Englishmen traitors and thieves. Who shall decide when such doctors disagree? And is it not a proverb that there is honour among thieves?
Marcantonio never spoke of these ideas of his to his friends when they congratulated him on his engagement. He only looked supremely happy, and told every one that he was, which was quite true. But his sister was to him a great difficulty, for she evidently was disappointed and displeased. He debated within himself how he should appease her, and he determined to lay before her his views about Leonora's future. To that intent he visited her in the boudoir, where they had so often talked before the engagement.
Madame de